Turkey

Removing Can Atalay from parliament is an attack on the working class

Can Atalay was elected as the Member of Parliament for Hatay from the Workers’ Party of Turkey (TİP) in the 2023 election. Since 2022, he has been serving an 18-year prison sentence for his involvement in the Gezi Park protests in 2013. We have translated this article from Marxist Tutum. Can Atalay’s court case has bounced back and forth between the Constitutional and Supreme Courts like a tennis ball, but the regime has once more shown its open contempt for the law and the Constitution by finally removing the TİP MP for Hatay from Parliament. Before the reading of the Supreme Court’s verdict...

Paramaz and his comrades in Beyazıt Square

Original A photograph from Beyazıt Square. Once you have seen this photo, you will never forget it. Gallows lined up behind each other, bodies in white shirts swinging from the rope with white placards hung about their necks. What the black and white photograph doesn’t show are the lush green trees in the background, and the revolutionaries who met death with sang-froid, sacrificing their lives for the cause they believed in. The date was June 15 1915. The history of 1915 has a lot to teach those who study history: of pain, hunger, exile, and massacres, especially in these lands. April 24 1915...

Turkey sacks a left MP

Can Atalay was elected as the Member of Parliament for Hatay from the Workers’ Party of Turkey (TİP) in the 2023 election. Since 2022, he has been serving an 18-year prison sentence for his involvement in the Gezi Park protests in 2013.

Turkey responds with antisemitism

The Israeli-Gaza War has prompted a significant rise in antisemitic incidents in Turkey. A second-hand bookshop in Istanbul went viral for displaying a sign saying “Jews Not Allowed”, and the Etz Hayim Synagogue in Izmir was spray-painted with the slogan “Murderer Israel”. Süleyman Sezen, an AKP (Erdoğan’s party) councillor in Samsun, said in a council meeting: “Historically, everyone gets angry with Hitler because he was racist. Hitler had a saying: ‘You will curse me for every Jew I did not kill.’ This is true. Once again I honour Hitler’s memory.” Şahzade Demir, an MP for Hüda-Par (a...

100 years of the Turkish Republic

On Sunday 29 October, the Republic of Turkey turned one hundred years old. This was the culmination of a process that began in the nineteenth century, and marked the victory of Turkish nationalism over not only the European imperialist powers, but also the vast array of minority peoples that had inhabited the Ottoman Empire. The period of Tanzimat in the then over-500-years-old Ottoman Empire (meaning reorganisation or restructuring, as with perestroika) began in 1839, and was an attempt to “modernise” the empire to bring it line with the other imperialist powers within the Concert of Europe...

Statement by Têkoşîna Anarşist

This is a statement from Têkoşîna Anarşist, a "revolutionary anarchist collective working in NE Syria (Rojava) with a focus on people's self-defense." It is reposted from its Twitter/X page, here. Workers' Liberty does not share or endorse all the views expressed in statements we repost. For our own statement on the war, click here . After an unprecedented attack organized by armed groups of Hamas in Israeli territory, Netanyahu declared war against Gaza and its population. Since then, IDF started a massive military operation, once again bombing and massacring Palestinian people. Palestinians...

Rojava: bombings, millions without electric and water

Turkey has stepped up its bombing campaign of both Iraq and the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, more commonly known as Rojava. This is in response to a suicide bombing in Ankara carried out by the PKK on 1 October, which injured two police officers but killed no-one other than the attackers themselves. The attacks have targeted civilian infrastructure, and at least 48 civilians have been killed so far. Erdoğan’s recently appointed Foreign Minister, Hakan Fidan, claims that the PKK members came from Syria, and that Turkey would be counting “all infrastructure, superstructure...

"Solving the Palestinian and the Kurdish question": statement by the PKK

This statement was published by the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers' Party. The PKK, through its Syrian organisation the Democratic Union Party (PYD), has been the leading political force in establishing the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), also known as Rojava. It is reposted from their website, here . We are not sharing their statement because we consider the PKK to be part of our movement or political tradition. We have previously criticised the PKK for their authoritarian record, and their organisation as a cult-of-personality around their leader, something which is...

Statement by Marksist Tutum: Palestinian people in the grip of imperialist war

A statement by the Turkish Marxist group Marksist Tutum on the war in Israel/Palestine, reposted from their website . On 7 October, several Palestinian organisations, led by Hamas, launched a major attack on Israel from Gaza. In a short period of time, nearly 5 thousand rockets were thrown into the Israeli territory and thousands of Palestinians, including paramotor and motorbike militants crossed the border. They carried out military actions in Israeli territory, and captured many Israelis. Israel, on the other hand, with the declaration that “we will leave no stone unturned”, embarked on an...

Refugees under attack in Turkey

The three to four million Syrian refugees in Turkey face increasing racist attacks and exploitative bosses. More and more refugees have been dying while trying to cross to Greece, and many fear forced repatriation to Syria. In Turkey, a campaign on social media has offered bounties for maimed or killed Syrians, and there is a constant stream of videos of Syrians and Afghans being harassed and attacked in public. Last year a more consciously neo-Nazi group gained some attention, the Ataman Brotherhood (ATK). Their aesthetic borrows heavily from European and American neo-Nazi terrorist groups...

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